Content Bridges Services

Press Mentions

Ad Age: Why So Many Media Companies Stumble GloballyThe few news brands that have succeeded, to greater or lesser degrees, arguably include CNN, Bloomberg, People, Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Economist. Other contenders are the Associated Press, the BBC, ABC, NBC, maybe CBS, National Public Radio, News Corp. and the top U.K. dailies, said Ken Doctor, the newspaper veteran who's now an analyst at Outsell. "If a news-media organization sees itself as covering the wider world, sees it as its foundation, that in and of itself differentiates it from all the local media -- newspapers, TV, radio -- out there," he said. "If, in addition, it has substantial reporting and editing resources, then it can play. The tough part is the part we're in: Who wins the race to ubiquity and can make it pay off?"

NYT: If The Globe Were Sold, What Price? “The best guesstimate of the real price: a buck. The best of an announced price: between $50 and $100 million,” he wrote in an e-mail message. The devil will be in the details of the obligations that a buyer would assume, he said, adding that “a buck essentially represents a gentleman’s agreement: I take a liability, headache and a distraction off your hands.”
He said that the Times Company could hang on to some pension liabilities or other obligations in exchange for a higher purchase price, a number that would give the appearance that it was getting something for the more than $1 billion it paid 16 years ago. He added that no bank would be interested in financing a deal given how other deals have blown up, so “the owner’s own money is immediately at risk.”

BizTimes.com: Journal Sentinel faces daunting choices“There’s no strategy – this is panic. What we’re likely to see this year (around the country) and what we’ll see in Milwaukee too is (publishers asking) how much they need to cut back and how much they can do to still hold their place in the market. For publishers, it’s about ‘How do we stay alive and stay profitable until we can get to some sort of breathing period?’ (Economic) recovery will not bring back their old business, but it will give them some breathing room.”

AP: Threat to shut Boston Globe shows no paper is safThe threat to close the paper "sends a very clear message to all employees and unions of surviving newspapers — that this is not business as usual. This is uncharted territory....Newspapers all "have a sword over their heads," said Doctor. If the industry wants to survive, he said, "everyone has to give some blood."

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January 11, 2009

GlobalPost Launch is Luce-Like in Its Timing

GlobalPost will get a lot of digital ink Monday, and deservedly so. It takes moxie to launch a news enterprise into the deep, winter gloom of The Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression. It's like Henry Luce founding Fortune in 1930.

GlobalPost founders Phil Balboni and Charlie Sennott ("Charlie and Phil's Excellent Adventure") are pushing forward at an opportune time. They are zagging -- assembling a staff of 70 correspondents worldwide -- while the rest of the journalistic world zigs downward. Full-time staff include 14, mostly editorial.

Take a look at the GlobalPost site. Of course on its first day, there's more throat-clearing and set-up then we'll expect to see when the site gets rolling into the news. We can see its breadth though already, and the experience and talent of its writers. It will be fascinating to compare GlobalPost head-to-head with the Times, the Post, the BBC, CNN, AP and Reuters on the stories that matter. It must offer not only excellent journalism, but journalism that stands apart; otherwise, it could easily fade into the Internet ether.

On the day of launch, though, what I think is most significant about the new site is this:

It's a membership model. GlobalPost invites its readers to get a "Passport" for $199 a year, $50 for students. As CEO Phil Balboni told me, "You must develop consumer revenue online." I asked Phil, longtime head of New England Cable News (which gets plaudits for its journalism and business smarts) whether that move was a philosophical one -- that readers would have more attachment to something for which they paid. No, he said simply, it's an economical imperative. He says that he hopes that over time, membership fees will make up 40% of the company's revenue, with the rest coming mostly form advertising and some from syndication. Passport members will get several kinds of unique access to the site and its correspondents.

Why is the member initiative so key? Newspapers, as they accelerate
their move to digital more rapidly (Detroit, East Valley Tribune,
Klamath Falls and many more in the works) are losing one of their
primary revenue supports -- circulation, which has been a consistent
20% of revenue over time. That leaves them wholly dependent on an ad
economy, very much itself in revolution. GlobalPost's membership model
resembles MinnPost, which has something more than 1000 members after a year.

News(paper) readers around the country have been complaining about the reduced size of papers and the fewer stories they're getting. Even as they migrate online though, they haven't had the case made to them that they should voluntarily support good journalism. That's why these models are so important in their testing of how much support can be gained.

It's a for-profit model, with shareholder stakes for correspondents. As a globally oriented news service, Balboni understands that he's got a huge, potential reader base. The site is targeted to a US reader -- base of 240 million+ -- and then there's that market of 900 million-plus who speak English worldwide. It is a big business opportunity and sends a different messsage than do non-profit models, which have their place in testing as well. Further, by offering the potential of significant upside to correspondents (who vest over five years), GlobalPost is aligning the digital news revenue economics of today -- paying correspondents $1000 a month -- with hopes, however wishful, of future payoffs. Balboni has raised $8.2 million to fund a slow burn rate and hopes to add another $1.8 by year's end to make plan.

It's a newer journalistic model. Lost in the business model focus can be the journalistic innovation. Sennott, a former Boston Globe global correspondent, has pushed hard on having correspondents based largely in single countries. They'll focus on those single countries, getting deep, rather than roving around a continent or sub-continent. So as we see most services cutting back on foreign reporting -- and spreading their resources out thinner and wider -- GlobalPost is trying the opposite tack. Another zag -- in a world that needs all it can get.

Comments

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I applaud Sennott's effort, but How in the world can you expect professional journalists to live on $1,000 a month? what kind of quality can you expect for that? Why is it that the site has $8.2 million, but the journalists that are providing the content are getting so little of it? It means that writers must have other full-time jobs that will take priority over their global post contributions, unless they have a working spouse with paid housing and benefits. You get what you pay for. Key question: Are the correspondents able to expense vital things such as interpreters/fixers? How about travel? These affect the quality of reporting.